Connectors often are positioned in locations where they are exposed to vibrations. One example is positioning a connector near the engine of an automobile. In such a case, if looseness occurs between housings, contact sections of the connectors may rub against each other and be scraped, leading to contact failures.
In Japanese Patent Publication JP 2011-23201A, a configuration is proposed in which a spring member is arranged between respective housings to prevent looseness between the housings.
However, with the configuration proposed in Japanese Patent Publication JP 2011-23201A, the spring member is sandwiched between the respective housings to press the spring member in a mating direction so as to cause the spring member to be deformed elastically. For this reason, in this configuration, a force required to cause the spring member to be deformed elastically is directly added to the force required for mating when the spring member is not provided and, thus, the mating force may become excessive. In addition, a locking mechanism, strong enough to counter a restoring force of the spring member being deformed elastically, is required.